If you stay at Joe Dodge Lodge (the AMC facility at Pinkham
Notch) you will be randomly paired with room mates (of the same sex).
Invariably these are interesting people filled with love of the mountains
with stories to tell. One year while skiing at Tucks my roomate told of
what he used to do when he was young and stupid. He and several buddies
used to do an annual midwinter traverse of the Presidentials from Crawford
Notch to Pinkham Notch. They took perverse pride in how ferocious the
conditions were and called themselves the "sub zero heroes". Then he got
married to a woman who loved hiking, camping and the outdoors and she
begged him to take her on one of these trips. So being young and in love
he did, just the two of them. They reached the Lakes of the clouds area
in rapidly worsening conditions, total white out, near dark, wind blowing
them over multiple times. Once when being blown over setting up the tent
she tripped and puched crampon holes in it. All night the wind blew a
steady stream of snow through the hole into the tent which he said
"writhed like a snake." Every half hour or so he got up to shovel snow
out of the tent but it was no use, he couldn't keep in front of it. She
began to cry and said, "we're going to die up here aren't we." They
survived, got down, she immediately sold all her camping and skiing stuff
and never went again. They'd been divorced for years. He said that on
that Jan. night it was -25 with 130 mph gusts.
I would never camp above timberline on Mt. Wash. The AMC guidebook, which
is very pithy, is full of little nuggets of wisdom. One that I have
committed to memory is, "The mountain spares most fools but now and then
claims one or two without mercy."
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